General Motors, the largest private provider of health insurance in the U.S., is seeking to reduce its health care costs by encouraging its beneficiaries to switch from brand-name statins to newly available generic versions of Merck's Zocor, Bloomberg/Chicago Tribune reports. Generic Zocor tablets are priced at about 90 cents each, compared with $3.33 per pill for Pfizer's Lipitor. GM currently spends $200 million dollars annually for cholesterol drugs. Its expenditures could be reduced by 59% to $82 million if the 250,000 GM employees taking cholesterol medications switch to the generic option. Cynthia Kirman, GM's corporate pharmacist, said, "This is one of the biggest opportunities GM has ever had in lowering our costs for treatment." If GM and other employers and insurers continue this trend by substituting generic drugs for the 70 brand-name drugs that will lose their patent within five years, total savings could reach $49 billion by 2011. Such switches also could reduce beneficiaries' out-of-pocket payments for prescription drugs (Bloomberg/Chicago Tribune, 6/29).